AMD launches E1-1500, E2-2000 Brazos 2.0 processors

AMD’s next-generation low power processors, code-named Temash and Kabini are due out in the first half of 2013. While we’re waiting for those chips to arrive, AMD is giving its last-generation of laptop chips a slight spec bump.

The AMD website now lists two new chips as part of the Brazos 2.0 family, the AMD E1-1500 and AMD E2-2000.

AMD E Series

These new processors are very slight updates over the 2012-era E1-1200 and E2-1800, with slightly faster CPU speeds and small bumps in graphics speeds.

Like their predecessors, the new chips are dual-core processors with 1MB of L2 cache and a TDP of 18 watts.

The new E2-2000 has a CPU speed of 1.75 GHz and a graphics clock speed of 700 MHz, which is a small improvement over the E2-1800 which ran at 1.7 GHz and had graphics which ranged from 523 MHz to 680 MHz. Both chips support DDR3 memory speeds of 1333 MHz.

Meanwhile the new E1-1500 runs at 1.48 GHz and has graphics clocked at 529 MHz. The older E1-1200 was clocked at 1.4 GHz and had 500 MHz graphics. Both feature support for 1066 MHz memory.

While it’s nice to see AMD giving these processors any spec bump at all… the odds that you’ll be able to see a perceptive difference in performance are pretty poor. I wouldn’t recommend upgrading your existing Brazos 2.0 machine to a new model. But if you’re in the market for a new laptop, I suppose it’s nice that you’ll soon be able to find one that’s about 3-percent faster than last year’s model… maybe.

These processors are getting close to the end of the line…soon to be replaced by the new Jaguar core of the Kabini/Temash platform. Still they can beat The hopeless current ATOM platform even if they have been on the market for more than 2 years!

http://twitter.com/free_variation free_variation

Maybe. I have a Brazos machine; it runs quite hot and battery life is poor. And it struggles with HD video.

http://twitter.com/joe_developer joe dev

Odd, I have an E-350 (Asus 1215b) which has no problem driving dual monitors ( 1920×1080 and 2048×1152 ) and handles both 720p and 1080p video playback just fine. Ubuntu, mind you.

I can’t speak to battery life, tbh, as I am often just taking it from one desk to another – but generally speaking Brazos has been saddled with being paired with bottom-tier batteries and screens by OEMs.

Ventilation did get pretty short thrift in the 1215b, I coupled it with a cheapo laptop cooler and haven’t had further issues.

sv

I have an E-350 too (HP dm1z) and though it gets warm during videos and other heavy processing tasks, it never gets hot. The HP CoolSense works well to keep temps comfortable. Also getting pretty good battery life (6.5 hrs when new and 5.75 hrs two years later). Perhaps Intel chips are cooler/more power efficient, but I’m happy with AMD’s performance-price ratio.

http://twitter.com/joe_developer joe dev

I am more than a little envious of you, I much prefer the design choices made with that device.

I am also not disappointed with the performance of AMD’s chips, for my work as a web-programmer the E-350 has never presented a bottle-neck ( compiling the odd module now and then could be faster, but we are talking about edge-case stuff ).

From my point of view, the fact that even the E-350 has hardware virtualization support is a huge plus, I’ve got it kitted out with 8gb of RAM and routinely run VM’s for crossplatform testing.

I’ve always wondered what it is that people do to actually ‘need’ the oft-mentioned performance advantage that lies beyond the sweet-spot that AMD seems to offer.

The only thing that really pulls on me regarding Intel is the ability to use it as a Hackintosh – as well as run SmartOS, which is currently implemented as an Intel exclusive.

http://www.facebook.com/theclivec Clive Chang

HD playback performance depends a lot on codec/player/hardware combo

I use media player classic and vlc and between the two its hard to find a video that doesnt run smooth. I am running xp with 4 gigs of ram however if you’re using windows 7 i would expect problems

Mahesh Agrawal

The real question is how will these things compete with low-priced Android platforms?